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Monday, Feb. 28, 2005 / 6:14 p.m. ~The Incredible Difficulty of Being Me~ The 'on/off' switch on my external modem is fried, so now it shuts itself off at random, and it can be hard to turn it back on. There, it just went. I need to see if I can locate the warranty, which I'm sure I can if I dig in my laundry room beneath the recycling and the dirty laundry, and determine if the modem is still covered under said warranty. My guess? No. Should I not have been turning it on and off each time I log on and off? Should I have left it on all this time? Can I fix it if I get in there with a screwdriver and take the damned thing apart, like I did to my coffee grinder not terribly long ago? I think the only major frustration will arise when I can't get it to stay on at all, or if/when I'm logged in to some chat program or another and it shuts off, in the midst of a very important chat, which never really happens, not that I don't do the chats on occasion, but the conversations are never important. Not yet. I'm thinking about stubbornness, defiance, and fears, and what's really behind our decisions not to try things, new things, possibly scary things, but possibly things which might be good, feel good, taste good, look good. This could range anywhere from trying escargots or sushi, to getting a drastically different haircut, to skydiving, or trying a different sexual position. Because of fear, and overthinking, analyzing and perceived displeasure and disgust, we won't even consider so many things, so many of us anyway, but sometimes, just sometimes, it turns out that we were so adamant because we really did want to try, we really did, and we do, but we are afraid. It's just a thought. I had a dream this morning that it was easy and it felt good, and I woke up with it, with that feeling, and I wanted it. And I won't note anything else about that, but it was monumental, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about, so we can leave it at that. Norma threw up her supper (she writes, shifting gears rather dramatically to avoid really describing the change she is feeling inside herself), and now she keeps walking over to me and giving me that "I just threw up!" meow of hers, the one that's sort of gravelly and gurgly, and really, I know all about it, I cleaned it up, and I was in the middle of something, so yeah, it was gross and I didn't care for it, and now I want to sit and write some things I'm feeling, so she went away and we're better off, both of us, now. I went to the store after work, the Whole Foods/Farmer's Market, and I was lost, as usual. I can't buy food to cook because I can't seem to wash my dishes, and until I wash the dishes and the sink area and counters are cleared and clean and I want to be in the kitchen instead of walking in and leaving soon after, I cannot possibly consider preparing meals. I cannot possibly consider being creative, culinarily. Or any other -ly. My brother and I are so much alike in this aspect of our characters, we are at times incapacitated by the process of whatever it is we have to do. That includes wanting or needing. Picture any 'chore', or any 'task', and imagine the steps leading up to it, the nature of the task itself, and the completion, the fruition. Now imagine that it's broken down into numerous more steps than that, and each one is dissected and imagined, and the entire process is planned, mapped out, far far in advance, far far to its end, and in that it becomes daunting. Any process. Laundry is not as hard, but it involves, for me anyway, removing things from the laundry room just so I can get to the washer to open it and turn it on and put in detergent and then the clothes, the lights already separated, or the darks already separated. Sometimes I don't get that far because I'm picturing the folding when it's all done, and I don't have the energy to go that far with it. Or the dishes, the way I wash them involving running the water the entire time, and thinking of how wasteful it is, and how I'm actually lessening the sustainability of my own life, and the lives of so many on this planet by letting that water run. And now, for instance, my fingernails are too long, they grow too fast, and I feel I can't function well, I can't use my hands with them like this, so I can't really wash the dishes, running the water or not, until I cut my nails and file them, but that involves standing in the bathroom where the light is best, and knowing I can't see terribly well up close with my glasses on, and yet it's hard to see without them too, if I'm concentrating visually, so it's a hassle. And it takes time, and it's tedious, overall. And then my fingers will get waterlogged, so do I cut before or after, should the nails be soft or hard when I clip and file? So this negates the whole concept of washing the dishes, and instead I pile them, quite artfully and skillfully, on the counters surrounding the sink. Thusly, I bought ready made food. I splurged on the Turkey Maccaroni that is so overpriced I've picked up a package and turned it around and upside down to stare at the price label many a time, but never bought any until today. Too expensive, but I like it, I love it (they used to keep it in the 'hot bar', for sale by the pound, but no longer), so I bought it. And a chicken burrito, because it's big, and I can heat it, and it's cold out again so I want hot food. And egg salad from the salad bar (along with black bean and corn salad, and a bow tie pasta with sun dried tomatoes and portabellos), and I had to get those containers, those plastic containers that I hate because they can't be recycled locally, and if I wash them and store them my cabinets explode with them, yet I cannot throw them away, and I used to actually carry them around in my car, like I do my canvas shopping bags, just for such occasions, but I no longer do, and this egg salad is good, really good, but hit or miss, as in sometimes it carries a bit of the salmonella, or something, and very much upsets my stomach, so I'm never sure if I should eat it at lunch or not, knowing I have to go back to work. This is what it's like to be inside my head. Too much thinking, way too much. So I am immobilized at times, disabled, crippled, and workers in the market look at me and ask, "May I be of some assistance?", and I say, "No, thank you", and then I feel like a huge loser, and a freak, and like I can't function in society, and I wonder if I need therapy, and how do I survive, and what happened to me, I used to cook and clean and I just did it, I didn't think so much about how it would go and how it would end, and now my thought processes cloud everything, obscure the simplest events, and I desperately want to have a best friend, a confidante, a lover, and I want to be loved, and I want there to be a time when I tell all of this to that person, that one person, instead of writing it online for some invisible audience of voyeurs. That was my after work shopping experience. And, as noted, I came home and dealt with this modem, which for now (knock something wooden) is staying on. And I will not turn it off. Guaranteed. And I need to cut my nails, and I need to wash the dishes, and I need to eat, because I can feel that I may be hungry. I wonder at my sanity, especially now, and last night when I 'cooked' some Ramen noodles with corn I wondered at using the aluminum pan, and I wondered at my chances of contracting (contracting?) Alzheimer's, and I wondered at my drug use in my formative years, and I wondered if I would die of malnutrition if I did not take my vitamins nightly. And I think I am very much afraid of growing old, especially alone. I know I need to watch Dan Rather now, as this is his last week as nightly news anchor for CBS, and he is going to feature clips of his career, or some such. I should consider therapy, if only I could afford it. But what would it do? I don't want to take drugs, I just want human intimacy, I think that's all I need. Oh, one more thing, this was the day, the last day I had to give my apartment management notice of moving, and I did not. I am not moving for one more year, and I begin to wonder, more with the wondering, if I ever will move. This makes me very sad. So much makes me very sad, and just when I think I'm feeling fine and good, I realize I am always on that precipice of feeling very bad and truly awful. I suppose right now, today, on this day because it held a lot of meaning, I am simply very disappointed. I was ready for my life to change completely, and I hesitated, I waited, I placed so much on someone else, and that someone else apparently didn't want what I wanted, and now, now I'm here, still, back where I always was, and it hurts a bit, but mostly it is so very disappointing. I want to be at that place I was before, when there was a time when I was happy on my own. I need to be happy with this, with all of it. Cost of the War in Iraq
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